Orange juice is about to get even more expensive after hurricanes and disease damaged many of Florida’s citrus groves. Orange juice prices, which have increased along with other groceries due to inflation, could see even bigger price hikes in 2023 due to supply chain issues as growers in Florida grapple with the worst crop in more than 80 years.
… Most of Florida’s oranges are used for orange juice production, forcing orange juice makers to look to the international market. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said the orange forecast for the 2022-23 season is at 2.83 million tons for the United States, which is down 18 percent from the previous season.
But if you love your OJ maybe prices won't go up all that much.
In the United States, orange juice is synonymous with Florida. It may come as a surprise, then, to look at the fine print on a bottle of Tropicana and Simply Orange and discover that part of the product isn't from the Sunshine State after all. It's from Brazil. Orange juice is big business in Brazil. After a series of frosts swept through Florida in the 1960s, devastating orange groves, Brazil met that deficit with its own supply, starting with frozen concentrate orange juice. Then, in 2005, citrus greening disease, which had spread throughout the world from China, arrived in Miami. It rendered oranges in affected groves inedible, resulting in a 55 percent decline in production over the next decade. In response, Florida's orange growers raised OJ prices by nearly $2 per gallon, causing bottlers to turn to cheaper Brazilian OJ. Watch: